Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Ampersats and pilcrows

If I link this here, I might be able to remember the names of these symbols.

The pilcrow

Until this morning, when I came across its name while researching something entirely unrelated, I never knew that the paragraph symbol — ¶ — is called a "pilcrow."

That strikes me as an important but small piece of information that is unlikely to ever be useful, but I shall nevertheless try to remember it.

However, this leaves me feeling intellectually unsatisfied. Is there a comparable name for the section symbol — §?

There are comments, but no answer to the question about a name for the section symbol, or as I have heard it called, division mark. A rather amazing article on punctuation, focusing on quotation marks, is here. No idea how long it will last. Ampersat? You've seen it: @.

Update: More of these! A discussion of swearing comics style leads to naming of signs.

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